* Rush Limbaugh on Hillary Clinton: “She sounds like a screeching ex-wife.” Heh, he should know. [Media Matters] MORE »

• WP politics editor John Harris: “For all its interesting and useful features, some things I don’t like about the on-line crankosphere are its frequent humorlessness and tendency to blow issues way out of proportion.” FUCK HIM!!!! BOYCOTT THE WASHINGTON POST AND ITS BUSH-TOTING TOADY COVERAGE!!! [WashingtonPost.com]
• Dial-a-bite Sabato gets a couplet comeuppance: “need a quote/do not tarry/call U-Va. and ask for Larry.” [WP]
• “JON KLEIN LIKES SHOWTUNES.” [FBNY]
• Please be gentle with Arianna. [Esquire]
• Tom Shales lights into the new Nightline’s faux gravitas: “‘Shorter shorts — a sign of the times?’ Probably not.” [WP]

• From the “New York Slimes” and the “Washington Compost” to the “San Francisco Comical” and the “Portland Snore-egonian,” all the nicknames fit to print. [The Corner]
• NYT realizes that blogging has “its own special power.” [LA Observed]
• BREAKING: Cheney not fond of reporters! [Fishbowl DC]
• Unclear on the concept: “For ABC to use virtual unknowns [to anchor WNT] instead of stars is blasphemous.” [NYO]
• Rummy on reporters in Iraq: Poor confused adorable scribes! No wonder they only report the bad news. [CJR]

• Animatronic anchors Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff (hybrid models with auto-shutdown and cruise control) will continue to host ABC’s “World News Tonight,” winning out over standard transimission hostbot Charlie Gibson, who still runs on diesel. [ABC]
• Hacktasatic Jon Friedman calls “The Week” journalism’s “first blogazine.” No, wait — it’s a magalog! A Zlog? What does that make “The Best Week Ever”? A blogedy? And the “Nightly News” — that’s a blogcastnewslog. CNN’s Blog Report is a bloport. And Times Select still sucks. [CBS Marketwatch]
• Anchlogger Brian Williams is a “dog person.” HOW CAN HE BE A BLOGGER THEN? [WaPo]
• FishbowlDC on the quitting/re-hiring of Postie Gabe Escobar: “Escobar is one of the Post’s only Hispanic editors (the only other one we can think of is Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Assistant Managing Editor/Sports.” National Book Award Finalist American Chica author and editor of Washington Post Book World Maria Arana, on the other hand, is just a girl who likes to read. [Fishbowl DC]
• Howie Kurtz on why the MSM blogs (Mblogsmers): “Actually, we’re just trying to look cool.” [WashingtonPost.com]
• David Corn hearts Viveca Novak, can’t guard her husband. Perhaps her conversation with Rove’s lawyer sparked a revelation: “maybe my client did not tell me everything.” [DavidCorn.com]

• Todd S. Purdum leaves NYT for Vanity Fair. Have fun editing the society heiress crack whore stories, Todd! (We don’t expect to be invited to the Oscar party, anyway.) [Romenesko]
• George Clooney v. Bill O’Reilly in the battle of the Irish blowhards. [NYP]
• WSJ show jumps to Fox from PBS, because that is where people will watch it. [LAT]
• CBS “wooing” Katie Couric to Evening News, because that is the only way that people will watch it. [LAT]
• And, right, we were just bought by the Times. You didn’t hear? No? I’m enjoying a Cristal body massage right now even as we speak. Maureen, fetch me the La Mer! [New York Press]

• The future of television news is “no more anchors.” Just Wolf Blitzer, pacing in front of a drive-in movie theater screen. [NYM]
• Kaus’s verdict on TimesSelect: “Inhibited writers, inhibited linkers, inhibited dialogue.” [Slate]
• CNN operator sees X on Cheney’s face as not so much an accident but an act of God. [NYP]
• The new Nightline went live. Live, damn it. Did we mention it’s LIVE LIVE LIVE? (Please add nude girls.) [TVNewser]
• Howie Kurtz like Katie Couric for her mind. Or close to it: “Hey, I’m way too professional to think about her legs (though it’s hard not to keep track of her ever-blonder hair).” [WP]

• “For the sake of a new book, Woodward has evidently been willing to protect the American public from various revelations about a government intent on destroying the republic. What a difference a few decades make.” [Mother Jones]
• Jeff Toobin says the only thing that can help the White House with PlameGate is if “the whole thing just goes away and people forget about it. That’s not going to happen.” [CNN]
• Gives a whole new meaning to “probes”: “If [reporters] keep going into the secret world they can come under the gravitational pull of another planet– the people in power, the secret-makers themselves. They’re still sending back their reports, but have ‘left’ our universe, so to speak.” Bob’s become an alien. [WashingtonPost.com]
• Walter Pincus’s refusal to back Woodward’s story makes Bob glum: “I did tell him; we have different memories,” Woodward said, his voice sounding sad and hurt. [VV]

• Fox’s DC holiday party theme: Holiday Dock Party Aboard the Titanic. “One wag suggested the Fox folks may be planning to invite the CNN Washington bureau, then abandon ship before the Titanic sets sail.” [BCBeat]
• Ted Koppel reveals low standards at going away party: “It’s a good urine, but not a great urine.” [B&C]
• The TIME Person of Year curse. [Media Mob]
• Karl Rove and public broadcasting head discussed creating “conservative” show for PBS. Because the White House lacks an effective media operation of its own. [Bloomberg]
• An uncomfortable laugh in the WaPo newsroom. [WP]

• Andrew Sullivan to blog for Time. Welcome to 2003, Time! [NY Post]
• Jon Klein continues to explain how he will drive CNN into the ground then dance on its handsome, tiny grave. [TVNewser]
• Men: perhaps unnecessary. Friends? Totally: “my witty friend Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic”; “my friend Leon Wieseltier”; “the current Cosmo editor, my friend Kate White”; “my late friend Art Cooper, the editor of GQ for 20 years”; “my pal Craig Bierko”… [NYTBR]
• WH bitchslaps WP. You know when you’re in trouble? When you’re on the defensive. [FishbowlDC]
• NYT public editor just lies back and takes it from Judy Miller. [Gawker]
• Radosh plays a tiny violin for Mary Mapes: “Mapes [has a] concern about people staking out her house to take pictures of her, digging up information about her from public documents, and interviewing her former colleagues. Have I mentioned that Mapes worked for 60 Minutes?” [Radosh.net]

• Anonymous Republican sources divided on fate of President. [CJR]
• WSJ wants to know what Fitzgerald’s got that they haven’t got. [WSJ]
• If Anderson Cooper is journalism’s “New Coke,” can we be its Fresca? [Romenesko Letters]
• Drowning in New Coke. [Access Atlanta]
• Was ousted CPB head Tomlinson a watch dog or a rabid one? [FishbowlNYC]

• There’s a lot of standing in the new Aaron Brown-Anderson Cooper CNN show. The upside (as it were?): ” [I]t was a perfect moment to check out Cooper’s backside.” His million-dollar backside! [SFGate, Book Standard]]
• The WaPo’s Len Downie: “[W]e upset many people every day with some aspect of our journalism.. .We are not trying to play it safe.” [WashingtonPost.com]
• “The Washington Post doesn’t do blind items because the lawyers really, really hate all the paperwork in lawsuits.” [Washingtonpost.com]
• “O’REILLY: You have leather in every shape and every color.” [Reference Tone]